Having to strip down regularly to have your partner check for mole irregularities may be initially embarrassing but a new Northwestern Medicine study shows the benefits of a partner frequently checking for troublesome moles based on training to do so far outweigh the embarrassment.
Study participants who received skin examination training diagnosed far more mole irregularities than those in the control group. They also grew more confident performing the examinations.
Common places to develop potentially fatal melanoma include hard-to-see areas where it is difficult to apply sunscreen such as behind the ears and knees, the top of the head and around the swimsuit line on a woman’s bottom.
Partners of patients who had been previously diagnosed with early stages of melanoma performed frequent skin self examinations on the patient over the course of the two-year study.
As the study progressed, a partners’ confidence in his or her ability to find irregular moles increased, as did the trust in one another to successfully identify the irregularities.
Partners examined hard-to-see areas such as the top of the head and the back of the knees and ears, which are common places to develop fatal melanoma
Based on their responses, melanoma patients and their partners eventually had no problems being checked for irregular moles by their partners, Robinson said.
Also noteworthy, the study found mole observations men and women make complement one another. Men tend to notice mole border irregularities better than women, whereas women tend to see color variations in the moles better than men.
